New image of Ceres shows what it would look like if you were there

Second pic offers perspective on the world's intriguing Occator Crater.

This image of Ceres approximates how the dwarf planet's colors would appear to the eye.

NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA

Occator Crater features prominently in this new image from NASA's Dawn spacecraft.

NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA

An artist's concept of the Dawn spacecraft at Ceres.

NASA

While New Horizons has gotten much of the planetary science glory this year after returning data from its spectacular Pluto flyby in 2015, NASA's Dawn spacecraft has continued to plug along in orbit around the dwarf planet Ceres, the largest object in the asteroid belt.

On Friday NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory released two new images of Ceres: a view of the intriguing Occator Crater that provides a new perspective on the distinctive feature and a global image of Ceres that represents how the world would appear to the naked eye were a human in orbit. (If only.)

Further Reading

The new image of Occator Crater, which measures 92km across and 4km deep, provides further information about the bright spots at its center and at other locations. Scientists now believe these shiny areas are salts. Ceres must once have had a briny, liquid ocean below the surface, and these salts mark deposits where this liquid came to the surface, froze, and subsequently sublimated.

A second image is based upon data collected by Dawn during its first full science orbit around Ceres in 2015 and combines the camera's red, green, and blue spectral filters. According to NASA, the "naked eye" color was calculated using a reflectance spectrum, based on the way that Ceres reflects different wavelengths of light and the solar wavelengths illuminating the world.

The Dawn spacecraft will continue its scientific mission through 2017 and possibly longer. NASA decided earlier this year to keep the spacecraft in orbit around the dwarf world to study it as it made its closest approach to the Sun, rather than trying to reach another asteroid, 145 Adeona. With additional data from Dawn, planetary scientists hope to better understand what happened to the briny ocean inside and whether Ceres might ever have been conducive to life beneath its surface.